MEDIA RELEASE

MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ALEXANDER DOWNER

FA33

26 March 1998

LANDMARK EDUCATION AGREEMENT BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND JAPAN

I am delighted to announce a landmark agreement between the Australian International Education Foundation (AIEF) and the Tokyo Colleges Association (TCA) which will see an unprecedented level of cooperation in tertiary education between Australia and Japan.

Under the agreement, a group of 150 Japanese junior college students will depart for Australia on 30 July on a four week study program which allows the students to receive credit for tuition undertaken in Australia.

This is a significant breakthrough in the official recognition afforded Australian education courses by Japanese institutions and is a most welcome development in education exchange aspects of the bilateral relationship.

The students will travel to Australia in the northern hemisphere summer break for an intensive program of English-language training, Australian studies and specialty courses. Australian institutions that are participitating in this initial program include Insearch Language Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, and the Centre for English Teaching at the University of Sydney, which were selected after meeting important criteria set by the TCA's Committee for Overseas Study.

The Executive of the TCA has indicated that if the initial pilot program to Sydney in July involving 150 students is successful, that the program can be expanded to send Japanese junior college students in the future to Melbourne and Brisbane as well to undertake short-term summer study programs.

The TCA comprises 70 junior colleges in the Tokyo metropolitan area with a total student body of 76,000.

I wish to acknowledge the cooperation and support of the TCA and their close collaboration with the AIEF and the Australian Embassy in Tokyo in bringing about this agreement. Members of the TCA, including the President, Professor Masao Takatori, who is also President of Toyoko Gakuen Women's College, have travelled to Australia twice over the past 12 months in finalising arrangements.

The Agreement is not only a positive endorsement of the quality of Australia's education system for foreign students, but also sends the powerful message that those standards meet the toughest of criteria in that they are accepted as credits towards the completion of college level qualifications in Japan.

The strengthening of educational exchanges and links such as this agreement was a major feature of the Australia-Japan Partnership Agenda, an 18-point blueprint for the development of relations between our two countries that was initiated at the Australia-Japan Ministerial Committee in August last year. I led a strong team of Australian Ministers to those talks in Tokyo.

For more information:

Paul Molloy, Counsellor (Public Affairs), Australian Embassy, Tokyo on (81-3-5232 4081)

Innes Willox on (02) 6277 7500